Adelaide poet David Ades wins $15,000 UC international poetry prize

A poem about a snow-blown, hectic day in Pittsburgh has won the $15,000 first prize in the University of Canberra vice-chancellor's Poetry Prize.

Dazzled by David Adès, an Adelaide poet who now lives in the United States, is a poem about the inspiration to write, told through the prism of a busy day in his life as a father and poet in Pittsburgh.

Inspired: David Adès started his poem after a hectic day in his new home town of Pittsburgh. Photo: Rohan Thomson

But the inspiration to write had to compete with a visit to a friend's house, a party, a dachshund, snow, and tired children.

"It was a very jam-packed day, full of people and events and noise and activity," Adès recalled.

Advertisement

"[And] when, finally, everybody was asleep and quiet, I lay in bed thinking about [the other poem] and thinking about responding to it. It was one of those nice things where despite all the activity of the day and the inability to be fully attentive to everything going on, the inspiration that her poem gave me pushed itself upward to manifest itself in a desire to write something."

The prize's head judge, British poet and novelist Philip Gross, praised Adès's poem as "irresistible" and "a generous and subtle celebration of the way a poem can infiltrate itself, coming to fruition slowly, among the swarming details of a life observed with appetite".

Adès moved to Pittsburgh with his family so that his wife could pursue an academic fellowship and divides his time writing poetry and caring for his two young children.

He said that the Pennsylvanian city's landscape had worked its way into his writing and he had written more poems about Pittsburgh than his home town of Adelaide.

"I didn't really know anything about Pittsburgh when I went and one of the things I didn't know and have been amazed to find out is the extent of its poetry - it's an absolute poetry hub with hundreds and hundreds of poets doing amazing things," he said.

The $5000 runner-up prize was won by Melbourne poet Debi Hamilton whose poem What Big Plans You Have weaves together the fairytale of Red Riding Hood and environmental issues.

More than 600 poets sent in 1050 entries for the poetry prize, which was started just this year and is one of the richest of its kind in the world. The total prize pool was $25,000.